“I need a drink,” I said, as we entered the room.
“I think I’ll join you,” Fin replied.
While he took a bottle of wine out of the fridge, I got a couple of glasses from the cupboard. Drinks poured, we sat at the table in silence, as if neither of us knew quite what to say.
Fin appeared pensive, his usual confidence seemingly gone. I waited for him to broach the subject of his stardom. After all, his quiet on the matter was rather pointless considering Mum had outed him for his celebrity status.
“I’m sorry,” he eventually said. “I should have told you.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, twiddling my wine glass back and forth between my hands. I might have already known Fin’s secret, but I was still interested to know why he had kept it to himself.
He drank a mouthful of wine. “Lots of reasons. You probably wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I said, before putting my glass to my mouth.
He took a deep breath as if gathering his thoughts. “To start with, you saw Roberta.”
I scowled. Boy, did I. That woman didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word discretion. All that fluttering of her eyelashes, the sickly-sweet voice, both from the second she met Fin. The woman clearly had no shame. As for her sugar request… My eyes were automatically drawn to the offending cupboard, knowing there weren’t many people around who’d had the pleasure of being stuffed into such a small space, forced to listen in on other people’s conversations. Yet one more thing to add to my list of that week’s reasons to be cheerful.
“And then there was your Mum just then.”
I frowned, wondering what he meant by that. I felt defensive on Mum’s behalf. I, of all people, knew my mother could be an oddball and it had been pretty evident to everyone concerned that she’d struggled to suppress her enthusiasm at meeting Fin. However, she was hardly in the same category as my self-serving neighbour. “Mum is nothing like Roberta,” I said. “Just because she asked you for your autograph and to have her photo taken with you…”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh. Then what did you mean?”
“That it’s just nice to be me sometimes. Without having to smile for the camera.”
“Well as long as we’ve got that straight.”
“People have a distorted impression of who I am and that’s the version everyone wants to meet. I don’t blame them, of course. Why would anyone expect me to be any different from the man zooming into their living room every week. I’m just not sure how to handle all the attention. To find that balance of giving people what they want, while being true to myself. If I’m honest, I find it a bit terrifying. People invest in that show.”
I considered my day’s viewing, unable to deny the man had a point on that score.
“And the last thing I want is to let anyone down.” He paused to take another drink. “I’m not sure I’m explaining myself very well.”
“No, I get it. Sort of.” Although I wasn’t sure if I should feel sorry for the man or shake him. There were people with far worse problems to contend with than fame and fortune.
“And then there’s you.”
“Okay,” I said. The way Fin was talking, I dreaded to think what he was about to say. “What about me?”
“With you, everything is real. Around you I can be myself because there are no expectations. Or at least there weren’t when you didn’t know all this stuff.”
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Well, did you?” He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “You can remember what you were wearing when we first met, can’t you?”
I let out a laugh. “Oh, so as well as wanting your photo, everyone dresses up for you now, do they?”
Fin chuckled. “I’m not saying that. But they do tend to have brushed their hair.”
I recalled standing on the doorstep when Fin first landed, with my scruffy bedhead and the previous night’s make-up smeared down my cheeks. “I’ll have to give you that one. Maybe I’d have washed my face.”
Fin smiled. “Then there was that first morning when I made breakfast.”
“That omelette,” I said, recalling how good it was. “It really was to die for.”
“And that’s my point,” Fin said, his whole demeanour lighting up. “Watching you enjoy something, not because some chap off the television made it, but because it tasted good. You were the same with the pancakes. You didn’t turn your nose up because they came with red noses and antlers. You saw the fun in them. These days everyone seems so serious when it comes to cooking. So pretentious. You remind me of why I became a chef in the first place. To make good simple food that people enjoy eating.”
“You don’t like what you’re doing now?” I asked.
“I like being part of a successful TV show and how it’s instilled a joy of cooking in a whole nation. I like getting to know the contestants and seeing the fire in their bellies. That’s what drives them to be the best. I love that I’m able to play a part when it comes to their individual journeys, helping them along the way, and hopefully making them better chefs.” He scoffed. “And there’s no denying the pay’s pretty good.”
I could only imagine.
“What I don’t like is all the extras that come with it. Like the stuff I mentioned before. I know there’s good and bad in every job but being out there can be hard sometimes.” He indicated to the window and streets beyond, before turning his attention back to me. “I’ve hosted TV shows in the US, but they were for more niche channels and the audiences weren’t as big. In my day-to-day life I could carry on pretty much the same as I always did. Then I came here to do Cooking Hell, although at the time none of us knew what we were getting into. No one involved predicted how big it was going to be. It was as if overnight I became public property.”
“None of that explains why you didn’t tell me about it all though. From what you’ve said you must have known it would come out at some point?”
“I was trying to hold on to the bit of anonymity you’d given me, I suppose. Plus, I was scared.”
“Of what? Not of me, surely?”
“I was scared things would change. That you’d change. Come over all…”
“Fangirl?”
Fin smiled. “I was going to say weird.”
“I’m already that.”
Fin let out another chuckle. “Seriously, this is your home. The last thing I wanted was for you to feel uncomfortable. Like you had to tread on eggshells, to think about what you were doing or saying all the time. And I didn’t want to have to do that either. If you’d known, neither of us could be ourselves.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said.
Fin furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
While he was being honest, I told myself it was time I was truthful too. I got up from my seat and headed over to the sideboard. Opening a drawer, I pulled out Fin’s cookbook and returning to the table, placed it down in front of him.
He looked from the book to me. “So you did know?” he asked, clearly confused.